As it happened: Manjhi should have resigned much earlier, says Nitish Kumar

New Delhi: Former Bihar chief minister and senior JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar on Friday said Jitan Ram Manjhi should have acted gracefully and resigned earlier. In the morning ahead of much anticipated confidence vote in Bihar Assembly, Manjhi has resigned as Chief Minister of the state.

"When it became apparent that Speaker Uday Narayan Choudhary, who is acting on the direction of somebody will never allow secret ballot during confidence vote, I thought it will not be wise on my part to put my supporting MLAs in danger and resigned," Manjhi told reporters at his residence.

Returning from the Raj Bhawan after submitting his resignation, Manjhi did not go to the Assembly and instead held a press conference at his residence.

Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi had asked the Speaker to choose between lobby division and secret ballot for the trust vote.

Manjhi claimed 40-52 JD(U) MLAs were in his favour "but due to fear of Nitish Kumar they did not want to be seen with me and when it became clear that there will be no secret ballot I thought I shall not put them in trouble and decided to quit."

He claimed that a large number of JD(U) MLAs visited his residence around 1 AM from backdoor from Nitish Kumar's residence. "There was fear on their faces and I thought I should not put them in trouble by exposing them to Nitish Kumar camp by going ahead with trust vote and decided to quit," he said.